Refocused school nurse role: early adopter evaluation

3. Findings

Overview of referrals from November 2015 to end of May 2016

This section provides an overview of the characteristics of the children who were referred to school nurses from November 2015 up to the end of May 2016. The two early adopter areas had received different numbers of referrals. Dumfries and Galloway had recorded 299 children and young people who had been seen by the School Nurse service. Perth and Kinross had recorded 107 for the same period. However, the team in Perth and Kinross had had to continue with their immunisation work in schools as well as adopting the new role and there were some weeks where it was not possible for any of the staff to fulfill their new role.

Gender

In both areas more girls were referred into the School Nurse services than boys, although a slightly higher percentage of girls were seen in D&G than P&K.

Table 3: Numbers and percent of children seen by School Nurse by gender

Age/Year Group

Overall, a higher proportion of secondary school children were referred into the School Nurse service in D&G than in P&K who had a higher proportion of primary school children referred in.

Table 4: Percent of children seen by School Nurse by Year Group

SIMD

P&K appear to have had a lower proportion of children from SIMD quintiles 1 and 2 referred into the School Nurse service than D&G. However it should be noted that there were a high number of children in D&G where the postcode had not been fully reported and so it was not possible to ascertain in which quintile they resided. In addition, both D&G and P&K have a higher proportion of children living in quintiles 4 and 5 than the national average so a higher number of referrals from these groups would be expected for these areas. As shown in Tables 5 and 6, a higher proportion of the children from the more deprived SIMD quintiles were referred to the SN.

Table 5: Percent of Children referred to School Nurse by SIMD - Perth and Kinross

Note: The populations used to derive the proportions are weighted according to ISD weighting schedule.

Table 6: Percent of Children referred to School Nurse by SIMD - Dumfries and Galloway

Note: The populations used to derive the proportions are weighted according to ISD weighting schedule.

Children's Status on and after referral to School Nurse

On the whole HPI status was not an accurate predictor of the need for referral. Both areas took referrals from children on Core and Additional HPIs although Perth and Kinross had fewer children referred on additional HPIs than Dumfries and Galloway. This is despite proportionately more children from primary school being seen by the P&K nurses.

Table 7: Percent of Children by HPI status on referral

A certain proportion of children also were referred in because they were subject to a Child's Plan, they were on the Child Protection register or they were Looked After (often in kinship care). However, the figures below also refer to children's status after intervention by the School Nurse, so they represent children who had a child's plan in place on referral plus those who were assigned a plan as a result of being referred to the school nurse.

Table 8: Percent children referred to School Nurse by status

Note: The three rows represent separate groups of children although any one child could be LAC, on the Child Protection Register and have a Child's Plan in place.